Rise of Fundamentalism
One of the puzzling questions of our time is why the rise of fundamentalism in Islam. One factor not always noticed is the contribution of literacy. Until fairly recently there were not many people in the region who could read the Koran. Like the Protestant revolution in which literacy and printing allowed access to the Bible. Literacy allowed many people to read the Koran and make their own interpretations and misinterpretations. It now seems that some feel that any individual can issue a Fatwah or call someone an Apostate. It also seems that many have mixed up their cultural ideas into Islam. Technology has allowed for the spread of radical ideas via the Internet.
Another interesting factor is the collapse of the Soviet Union which had some unintended consequences. The Soviets had provided funds for change oriented groups. The collapse of funding weakened people who wanted change in a secular fashion. I remember when the Shah of Iran was overthrown by Khomeni the only concern that the U.S. had was that he was not a communist. Many were blinded by their anti-communist view of the world and missed other threats. The U.S. support for the Islamists in Afghanistan against the Soviets returned to backfired yet again.
Rise of fundamentalism across various religions is also interesting phenomenon. The Reverend Davidson Loehr in a sermon entitled, "The Fundamentalist Agenda" on 3 February 2002 in the First UU Church of Austin, TX made the follow observations:
It is terribly important for us to realize that the fact that ÓourÔ Christian fundamentalists have the same hate list as their Muslim fundamentalists is not a coincidence!
From 1988-1993, the University of Chicago conducted a six-year study known as The Fundamentalism Project, the largest such study ever done. About 150 scholars from all over the world took part, reporting on every imaginable kind of fundamentalism. And what they discovered was that the agenda of all fundamentalist movements in the world is virtually identical, regardless of religion or culture.
They identified five points shared by virtually all fundamentalisms:
1. Their rules must be made to apply to all people, and to all areas of life. There can be no separation of church and state, or of public and private areas of life. The rigid rules of God and they never doubt that they and only they have got these right must become the law of the land. Pat Robertson, again, has said that just as Supreme Court justices place a hand on the Bible and swear to uphold the Constitution, so they should also place a hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible. In Khomeini's Iran of two decades ago, and in the recent Taliban rule of Afghanistan, we saw how brutal and bloody this looks in real time.
2. The second agenda item is really at the top of the list, and its vulgarly simple: Men are on top. In every way. Men are bigger and stronger, and they rule not only through physical strength, but also and more importantly through their influence on the laws and rules of the land. Men set the boundaries. Men define the norms, and men enforce them. They also define women, and they define them through narrowly-conceived biological functions. Women are to be supportive wives, mothers, and home-makers.
3. A third item follows from the others indeed all of these agenda items are necessarily interlocked, and need each other to survive. Since there is only one right picture of the world, one right set of beliefs, and one right set of roles for men, women and children, it is imperative that this picture and these norms and rules be communicated precisely to the next generation. Therefore, they must control the education of the society. They control the textbooks, the teaching styles, they decide what may and may not be taught. In Afghanistan, women were denied any education at all beyond basic literacy and sometimes not even that much. And in our own country it was a long and hard battle to get women access to college and professional educations and credentials.
4. A fourth point isn't an agenda item, but an observation voiced by several of the scholars: there is an amazingly strong and deep resemblance between fundamentalism and fascism. Both have almost identical agendas. Men are on top, women are subservient, there is one rigid set of rules, with police and military might to enforce them, and education is tightly controlled by the State. One scholar suggested that its helpful to understand fundamentalism as religious fascism, and fascism as political fundamentalism. Fundamentalists spurn the modern, and want to return to a nostalgic vision of a golden age that never really existed. Likewise, the phrase overcoming the modern is a fascist slogan dating back to at least 1941.
5. And the fifth point is the most abstract, though its foundational. Fundamentalists deny history in a radical and idiosyncratic way. Fundamentalists know, as well or better than anybody, that culture taints everything it touches. Our teachers, our times, color how we think, what we value, and the kind of people we become. If you have perverse teachers or books, you develop perverse people and societies. And they agree on the perversions of our current American society: the air of permissiveness, narcissism, individual rights unbalanced by responsibilities, sex divorced from commitment, and so on. The culture must be controlled because it colors everything in it. So far, so good. What they don't want to see is that exactly the same thing was true when their own sacred scriptures were created. Good biblical scholarship begins by studying the cultural situation when scriptures were created, to understand their original intent so we can better discern what messages they may still have that are relevant for our lives. But if fundamentalists admit that their own scriptures are as culturally conditioned as everything else, they lose the foundation of their certainties. St. Paul had severe personal hangups about sex, for instance, that lie behind his personal problems with homosexuality and women. How else would he say that it is a shameful thing for a woman to speak in church, or that men are made in the image of God, but women are made in the image of men? These are the reasons that informed biblical scholars take some of Paul's teachings as rantings rather than revelations. But for fundamentalists, their scriptures fell straight from heaven in a leather-bound bootitlery jot antitlele intact.
The complete sermon is available at http://www.austinuu.org/sermons/loehr020302.html
We have had fundamentalist revivals throughout our history. It seems to me that the grasping for anchors by fundamentalists historically has tended to come as a reaction to a rapidly changing society. Globalization seems to be facing resistance from people more prone to tribalism. Some see the choice of globalization as between "Jihad v. McWorld," http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/199203/barber It all remains to be seen how things will turn out.
Another interesting factor is the collapse of the Soviet Union which had some unintended consequences. The Soviets had provided funds for change oriented groups. The collapse of funding weakened people who wanted change in a secular fashion. I remember when the Shah of Iran was overthrown by Khomeni the only concern that the U.S. had was that he was not a communist. Many were blinded by their anti-communist view of the world and missed other threats. The U.S. support for the Islamists in Afghanistan against the Soviets returned to backfired yet again.
Rise of fundamentalism across various religions is also interesting phenomenon. The Reverend Davidson Loehr in a sermon entitled, "The Fundamentalist Agenda" on 3 February 2002 in the First UU Church of Austin, TX made the follow observations:
It is terribly important for us to realize that the fact that ÓourÔ Christian fundamentalists have the same hate list as their Muslim fundamentalists is not a coincidence!
From 1988-1993, the University of Chicago conducted a six-year study known as The Fundamentalism Project, the largest such study ever done. About 150 scholars from all over the world took part, reporting on every imaginable kind of fundamentalism. And what they discovered was that the agenda of all fundamentalist movements in the world is virtually identical, regardless of religion or culture.
They identified five points shared by virtually all fundamentalisms:
1. Their rules must be made to apply to all people, and to all areas of life. There can be no separation of church and state, or of public and private areas of life. The rigid rules of God and they never doubt that they and only they have got these right must become the law of the land. Pat Robertson, again, has said that just as Supreme Court justices place a hand on the Bible and swear to uphold the Constitution, so they should also place a hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible. In Khomeini's Iran of two decades ago, and in the recent Taliban rule of Afghanistan, we saw how brutal and bloody this looks in real time.
2. The second agenda item is really at the top of the list, and its vulgarly simple: Men are on top. In every way. Men are bigger and stronger, and they rule not only through physical strength, but also and more importantly through their influence on the laws and rules of the land. Men set the boundaries. Men define the norms, and men enforce them. They also define women, and they define them through narrowly-conceived biological functions. Women are to be supportive wives, mothers, and home-makers.
3. A third item follows from the others indeed all of these agenda items are necessarily interlocked, and need each other to survive. Since there is only one right picture of the world, one right set of beliefs, and one right set of roles for men, women and children, it is imperative that this picture and these norms and rules be communicated precisely to the next generation. Therefore, they must control the education of the society. They control the textbooks, the teaching styles, they decide what may and may not be taught. In Afghanistan, women were denied any education at all beyond basic literacy and sometimes not even that much. And in our own country it was a long and hard battle to get women access to college and professional educations and credentials.
4. A fourth point isn't an agenda item, but an observation voiced by several of the scholars: there is an amazingly strong and deep resemblance between fundamentalism and fascism. Both have almost identical agendas. Men are on top, women are subservient, there is one rigid set of rules, with police and military might to enforce them, and education is tightly controlled by the State. One scholar suggested that its helpful to understand fundamentalism as religious fascism, and fascism as political fundamentalism. Fundamentalists spurn the modern, and want to return to a nostalgic vision of a golden age that never really existed. Likewise, the phrase overcoming the modern is a fascist slogan dating back to at least 1941.
5. And the fifth point is the most abstract, though its foundational. Fundamentalists deny history in a radical and idiosyncratic way. Fundamentalists know, as well or better than anybody, that culture taints everything it touches. Our teachers, our times, color how we think, what we value, and the kind of people we become. If you have perverse teachers or books, you develop perverse people and societies. And they agree on the perversions of our current American society: the air of permissiveness, narcissism, individual rights unbalanced by responsibilities, sex divorced from commitment, and so on. The culture must be controlled because it colors everything in it. So far, so good. What they don't want to see is that exactly the same thing was true when their own sacred scriptures were created. Good biblical scholarship begins by studying the cultural situation when scriptures were created, to understand their original intent so we can better discern what messages they may still have that are relevant for our lives. But if fundamentalists admit that their own scriptures are as culturally conditioned as everything else, they lose the foundation of their certainties. St. Paul had severe personal hangups about sex, for instance, that lie behind his personal problems with homosexuality and women. How else would he say that it is a shameful thing for a woman to speak in church, or that men are made in the image of God, but women are made in the image of men? These are the reasons that informed biblical scholars take some of Paul's teachings as rantings rather than revelations. But for fundamentalists, their scriptures fell straight from heaven in a leather-bound bootitlery jot antitlele intact.
The complete sermon is available at http://www.austinuu.org/sermons/loehr020302.html
We have had fundamentalist revivals throughout our history. It seems to me that the grasping for anchors by fundamentalists historically has tended to come as a reaction to a rapidly changing society. Globalization seems to be facing resistance from people more prone to tribalism. Some see the choice of globalization as between "Jihad v. McWorld," http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/199203/barber It all remains to be seen how things will turn out.
posted by Craig Campbell | 3:05 PM
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